Incidence of disease, injury and death in Thoroughbred foals and yearlings on stud farms in the UK and Ireland

Abstract

Background: Up-to-date estimates of early-life morbidity and mortality in Thoroughbreds are lacking. Methods: A birth cohort was established on Thoroughbred stud farms across the UK and Ireland. All veterinary interventions for disease or injury between birth and 18 months of age or leaving the study were recorded. Multilevel Poisson regression models with farm and foal as random effects were fitted to estimate incidence rates. Results: Data were available for 3328 foal-months at risk for 275 foals on seven farms. The overall rates of disease and injury requiring veterinary intervention and mortality were 11.9 cases/100 foal-months at risk (95% confidence interval [CI] 8.6-16.2) and 0.2 cases/100 foal-months at risk (95% CI 0.1-0.4), respectively. Almost half (n = 133/273, 49%, 95% CI 43-55) of the live-born cohort required veterinary intervention for musculoskeletal disease or injury, equating to 5.8 cases/100 foal-months at risk (95% CI 4.1-8.2), predominantly reported as developmental orthopaedic disease (DOD). Limitations: Convenience sampling of participants may affect the generalisability of the findings. Conclusions: Rates of musculoskeletal disease and injury, in particular DOD, on Thoroughbred stud farms were high. Further work to identify modifiable risk factors and further understanding of the economic impact of these conditions and long-term consequences for musculoskeletal health and performance is required.

Associations between turn out practices and rates of musculoskeletal disease and injury in Thoroughbred foals and yearlings on stud farms in the United Kingdom

“…A summary is provided in Table 1; further description of disease, injury and mortality is reported elsewhere. 22…”

“…Findings can be utilised to inform management strategies aimed at improving musculoskeletal health in this population. The study reported here forms part of a larger body of work, further description of disease and injury in this population is published elsewhere, 22 descriptions of turn-out regimes and other farm management practices will be presented separately (Mouncey et al, unpublished data).…”